PvP in World of Warcraft, yet again
All I really play these days are the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. As hoped, they do have some of the basic properties a competitive game needs to even be a competitive game: there is a beginning, middle, and end to a match; there are clear rules about who won and who lost the match, and there are roughly equal numbers of players on each side.
That's a good start. There are also elements to the battlegrounds that make them total trash as a competitive game. The thing I can't figure out is...why do the elements that I hate (and that ruin the game as a "real competitive game(TM)" end up making me play way more than I otherwise would? Also, if I could create a similar game any way I wanted, what would I change?
First, let's look at these "trash elements" as far as competitive games go.
1) You can fight computer-controller monsters and you get loot that helps you win in pvp. Why?
2) While fighting computer controlled monsters, your ability to organize with 40 other people matters more than your individual skill. Why? (This is just a sub-problem of the first problem.)
3) If you play A LOT of games, you gain enough "faction reputation to buy new gear that helps you win. Note that even if you lose, you still gain the faction rep, just slower.
4) There is a pvp ladder system. If you are ranked very, very high in this system, you get better loot that helps you win. This ladder system is hopelessly brokenly designed FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF FAIRNESS. Note that this is an MMO and it's not about fair pvp.
So why do I play these battlegrounds constantly? The answer is 3 things:
1) It's fun.
2) I can get faction reputation to get better gear.
3) Maybe I can get a high pvp rank if I put insane time into it.
Why am I so baited by 2) and 3)? Can you imagine Street Fighter if you could just "play a long time" and get a better Dragon Punch? Lol, it's craziness. And yet it owns me.
I could write a whole article on the craziness of the pvp rankings, but mabye I'll save that for next time. Anyway, if I could create a similar game, what would I do differently? Just eliminate 2) and 3) so that you can never gain items to make you better? That's the first obvious answer, but unfortunately those rewards are so damn strong, that it gets a lot of people to play. What if the rewards did not affect gameplay? Like if they were cool looking clothes your character could wear, and they are hard to get, but they don't give a gameplay advantage. I'm guessing that only a very small percentage of players would be baited into caring about that.
My answer really should be "Counter-strike doesn't give any item-advantages before the match even starts, and that's how it should be." But these rpg forces are SOOO strong, that as a game designer, I can't just totally ignore them.
Thoughts?
--Sirlin
November 8th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
The flaws in the system are obvious, on a competitive level, yet make perfect sense in their ability to bring back a crowd.
The reason that it can be so enjoyable while having a system clearly favouring time spent playing over actual playing skill like in Street Fighter or Chess is because it’s fun regardless of this system.
The system of rewards of returning to battlegrounds helps to draw the player in. This doesn’t stop it being flawed and while the game would be better competitively without it, even with this system it’s still a fun competitive game.
It would be better without competitively without rewards for time spent playing, but then that’s not why that system is there. It’s enjoyable despite the reward which are there for reasons outside of competitive gaming, I’d imagine.
Oh on a side note, I’m a huge fan, Sirlin. You might even go as far to use the term ‘hero’. Looking forward to the opportunity to read your book once it’s released.
- pictish
November 8th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
The game’s been mentioned before in previous posts, but perhaps you might want to check out Guild Wars?
Think of it like Magic: The Gathering, but in real time. Now think of your deck being spread out into 8 sub-decks, each taken by another player. That’s about as close a description of high-end PvP in Guild Wars as I’ve ever heard.
Each character has a primary and secondary profession (like Elementalist/Monk, aka Nuker/Healer), and characters have full access to skill sets from both professions, allowing for a total of about 150 skills per character. The catch is that you can only ever have 8 skills equipped at any one time - the skills are interchangable once between PvP battles, but once you’ve picked your skill set, you’re limited to that in the match.
Skills have to be unlocked, and, this is where your analogy comes in. Imagine that, when playing for a long time, you get not access to a better dragon punch, but a different move altogether - say a fireball, a hurricane kick, a crouching fierce, etc. Each skill is inherently different from the next, but the promise by the game designers is that the skills as a whole is balanced, so you won’t have a situation where you can Rose Crouching Strong your way to victory over everyone.
I would honestly love at some point in the future to hear some of your thoughts on the game.
November 8th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Yes, many people have brought up Guild Wars. On paper, I love Guild Wars. I love the propaganda from the Guild Wars developers who directly trash talk the pointlessness of rpg pvp like World of Warcraft.
What I didn’t love was the actual game. It was just so totally unpolished that I couldn’t stand it. In WoW you can hold the left mouse button to rotate the camera without rotating your character. In GW you can’t. GW had all this fucked up click-to-move that was default on and I couldn’t even figure out how to turn off. The nameplates above people’s heads are hard bad looking. Right click someone and there’s no options or anything. You can’t jump, which feels really awkward when you can’t go up a 1-inch tiny lip on a hill.
Then I tried actual pvp and lost totally bad, of course. No problem there, so I look for the combat log to read what actually happened so I can get better. No combat log.
The absolute worst thing I can say is that I played Guild Wars briefly in the beta about one year before release. I noted ALL of these problems at the time. ZERO of them are fixed, and the game remained as unpolished and painful as ever. So that removed any hope I had that it might get better.
I should probablly force myself to play Guild Wars against my will, as a learning experience from a design standpoint. Maybe some of you will help me into it. Let me at least get a decent pvp rank in World of Warcraft though, lol. I’m too suckered into that pointless goal right now.
–Sirlin
November 8th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
I think you’re being unnecessarily harsh towards Guild Wars on account of some really minor details. For one, right clicking allows camera rotation, and I know of nobody who actually moves by clicking on the screen. Also, we aren’t really concerned with nameplates as much as profession types and used skills, both of which are easily identified with a glance at the target.
Jumping? Sure, it would add a better feeling, but with a totally instanced PvE world, one which frankly sucks, I don’t see the value.
Combat log? No such thing exists because you know exactly why you’re dying as you play. It requires experience to learn all the skills, but it just comes with time and you’ll find that when ” -110, Obsidian Flame” flashes briefly across the screen, you know exactly why you’re taking damage, and how much of a threat it is. Same thing with hexes and enchants. You can tell what’s happening to you with mere glances to the upper left of the screen, once you start really learning the ropes.
Guild Wars is not intuitive by any stretch of the imagination, but getting in and learning why casting that spell tore your health in half is something that just takes time, and frankly, it’s well worth it. The gameplay is much more balanced than WoW, since everyone has access to perfect equipment and the classes all have their strengths, weaknesses, attacks, and counters.
November 9th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Back to World of Warcraft:
The thing is… it is FAIR! It’s just that the “arena” (couldn’t find academic word, but you’ll understand) of games like Street Fighter and Chess are a much greater percantage of the whole game than World of Warcraft.
For chess, I can go outside the arena and improve my games by reading books, talking strategies, etc. And I have the choice of being black or white. I have 16 pieces which I will all use during a fight.
Now that’s a pretty tight arena structure.
Street Fighter, again, discover new strategies. But whereas (I think) the game has less options in the arena, it has alot more outside. Which character do you play? Which moves do you use? What matchups are possible?
And another thing that Chess doesn’t have: you need to practice! Pulling off Dragon punches 100% of the time is better than a Dragon punch that accidently becomse an uppercut 20% of the time. (don’t get me started with Just Frame/Roman Cancel/Custom Combos)
World of Warcraft goes a step further: Even though the arena is big (so many possibilities), what’s possible outside is humongous. Items, skills, talents, characters… what to choose?
The unfair part is that it can take a lifetime top optimize these options. Still, we all start out at level one and have the same world to play in. That is fair.
Saying it isn’t fair is like saying your Magic the Gathering opponent plays unfair because he has better cards.
But one little snag: Blizzard is well aware of the “unfairness” of pvp. But they are stuck between two options: if they make the epic (pvp) sets easier to get, the game would be more fair, but that would make the game less interesting once a player has the “perfect” gear.
The funny thing is: WoW seems more fair than Chess and SF some times:
I’ve tried being the best, but there was always somebody smarter than me.
For WoW, you don’t really have to be smart to be one of the strongest players. You just have to want to be the strongest more than other players.
In that sense, it’s willpower, not intelligence that divides us. And I find that even more fair.
November 9th, 2005 at 11:47 am
The parts you hate about the game make you keep playing because it’s the true drive of the game. The whole game is based on working for better items. And you want the items you worked hard for to count in PvP.
The only way you could make battlegrounds in WoW fair without taking that away is having a smart matching system, but it takes long enough to find a game as it is.
November 9th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
In that sense, it’s willpower, not intelligence that divides us. And I find that even more fair.
That’s never fair. To say that two equally matched players should be diveded because one played more often is absurd. What’s further absurd is to suggest that someone with the ‘willpower’ to play for more time than me should have greater access to options an me, just because I’m new. If i’m new yet can play the game better, why should I still lose because I haven’t played for two hundred hours?
Like Sirlin has pointed out before, I think, transposing this idea to other competitive games is ridiculous. Starting chess with two queens because you’ve played for 500 hours. Or having a level 60 Ryu in street fighter, so you’ve lost at the start with your level 20 Ryu because you’ve not played as long as me - even if you’d destroy me if we each had the same options available (i.e, standard normal Ryu)
The time reward system certainly isn’t bringing in players for a competitive reason, but a distinctly different gameplay reason.
- pictish
November 9th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Pictish has it exactly right. Maybe I should write a faq on this commonly misunderstood issue. It’s NOT AT ALL THE SAME when you compare “in-game material advantages such as epic gear” and “advantages a player brings to the table such as his skill or knowledge of the game.” Those are really, really not the same. pitcish pretty much covered that point for me.
To Yuki, I’ll stick by my points. Just to be clear, I’m saying that World of Warcraft lets you rotate the camera AND the character at once, or you can rotate the camera BUT NOT the character. Guild Wars lacks this, and it’s annoying because it’s an obvious feature that I use all the time.
Not having a combat log is a lot worse than having a combat log.
Not being able to jump doesn’t have any real gameplay-impact, but from a presentation and feel standpoint, it was a poor decision. It just feels wrong. It feels as wrong as bad nameplates look. Again, I Guild Wars looks good on paper, but it’s horribly unpolished. The momement to momement feel is really lacking to me. It’s analgous to playing chess on a very ugly chess board. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it makes you wonder what they are thinking. To make matters worse, the first 3 professions I tried to create, I could only choose from homosexual-looking men. What kind of horrific art direction is going on over there?
I really wanted to like it…
So yeah, World of Warcraft. If only I could harness the power of “play more to get…something good” while at the same time maintaining “you get no benefit from playing a lot. If you waltz in and have tons of skill, then you win.” The two are totally at odds, but perhaps there’s a sneaky way to have a real competitive game that borrows just a bit of the addictiveness of an rpg.
–Sirlin
November 9th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
Just a note about Guild Wars:
2) While fighting computer controlled monsters, your ability to organize with 40 other people matters more than your individual skill. Why? (This is just a sub-problem of the first problem.)
^ 100% true as far as Guild Wars goes.
November 9th, 2005 at 9:12 pm
Regarding the PvP ranking system itself, there are several implementation flaws that are broken about it. It takes way too much time, even by MMORPG standards, to get to the top. We aren’t talking a few hours everyday, this is without exaggeration an endeavor that requires twelve to sixteen+ hours of play everyday, for a month or so, to attain on any fairly populated server. I see the players going for the highest ranking (rank 14, Grand Marshall or High Warlord) online, farming battlegrounds at 9am and still in there at 4pm, 11pm, and well into the night.
Also, the system rewards easy victories rather than close battles, causing players to /afk leave and farm battlegrounds, in a competition against their own faction for rank rather than against the opposing side.
Blizzard has said they are going to temporarily prevent players from queueing another BG instance if they /afk out, but I don’t see this getting rid of the problem entirely, as people will just play to lose on purpose instead to get the match over with. They should change the amount of points gained by the closeness and length of the battle, but of course this has to be balanced with preventing people from exploiting with opposing faction alliances.
Many of these points were well stated in this Fires of Heaven discussion thread:
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/showthread.php?t=16580&page=1&pp=15
Some choice quotes (I apologize ahead of time if anyone is offended by the profanity but it should hit home for anyone who has tried to get the highest PvP ranking):
“The 7 Stages of WoW PvP®:
1. excitement: this is going to be fun!
2. curiosity: i wonder how fast i will progress!
3. disappointment: wow i didnt progress very far
4. resentment: this sucks ass
5a. quitting: fuck this shit
5b. resigned to fate: this sucks ass but im pressing on
6: heavy anal: your ass is plugged 12 hours a day with no lube and no stopping
7a. quitting: fuck this shit
7b. suicide: seriously, fuck this SHIT
7c. rank X achieved: grats (now see point 7a or 7b or both)”
-FuckYou
“I know this is a MMORPG we are talking about but to be honest I’d be ashamed to be rank 13+. Might as well have a GM change my name to “worthless piece of shit IRL” and make my character look like a huge turd.”
-dak
“You’re failing to grasp something. 11 am to 4 am. 17 hours a day. Seven days a week. For four weeks.
It’s about making the requirements SANE. Requiring a GM to get standing one every week is just insane.
If there was a spread of say standing 1 to 5 or even 1 10 where you could advance it WOULD be possible to get GM without being unemployed, out of school, and a hermit. I go to university and I scored standing 4 last week.
There’s a certain line where “difficult and time consuming” becomes “OMFG sacrifice your whole life for the videogamez”. We’re far, far past that line.”
-Schatze
“1. You compete with your own faction and not the opposition. The ‘top’ Horde guilds on my server /AFK out versus us the minute they zone in and see our names. They would rather PUG stomp and earn quick and easy CP. This has been more rampant in Basin because there are no stalemates on this map (which I like). When it was Alterac Valley, the Horde on our server knew we were in competition with another guild and would turtle in Iceblood or Frostwolf behind all their NPC’s. So they stretched the game on basically making my team lose CP. Our pride kept us in those games far too long and the other guild we were competing with took the top spot.
2. Your health takes a nosedive for the worst. We were literally playing from 11am to 5am everyday for the past god knows how long. The past 2 weeks we said f that and are just doing BG’s casually.
3. People who cannot make progress due to the people who play a ton per day get frustrated.
4. People who finally do hit 14 are so burned out they either quit or stop logging in as much.
The system promotes farming CP, so you never have good games. You end up at war with your own faction, which is very stupid.
-MrO
November 9th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
Forgot to link that url: http://www.fohguild.org/forums/showthread.php?t=16580&page=1&pp=15
November 9th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
Gee, sounds like a lot of fun. Either get stomped on or sacrifice your entire conscious life to do a little stomping. This sounds more absurd than (though oddly similar to) the YPP setup, whereby you could stomp a little just by making battles occur at inconvenient times. At least the YPP creators knew something was wrong with their system. Although, they still didn’t handle it as well as they could have.
As for Sirlin’s most recent suggestion, I love the idea of an MMO where an amazing player could create a new character and take on the best. I would be all for it, provided the skill level is deep enough where most players are at a sizable disadvantage in that situation.
The key is finding at least one reward which deeply motivates players, yet does not give them an advantage against each-other. Perhaps instead of a level system, there are barriers barring the way to new areas that you must have a certain amount of victories to cross. Also, allow the newcomers a chance to battle against the pros by having necessary rescources within towns all players have access to. This system could allow for downloadable episodes. Just some ideas, but probably not enough to put a game around.
It’s definitely an uphill battle, as some MMO veterans will take insult at a game that doesn’t allow their hours to pay off in skirmishes.
–BDT
November 10th, 2005 at 1:19 am
It’s NOT AT ALL THE SAME when you compare “in-game material advantages such as epic gear” and “advantages a player brings to the table such as his skill or knowledge of the game.” Those are really, really not the same.
Not necessarily disagreeing, but something to think about:
Let’s say a player enjoys farming items in WoW/GW/whatever. He spends all his time farming and does it well. Our material player then brings his geared character into a pvp environment and loses to someone with more “skill.” Let’s make the player he lost to his polar opposite–instead of spending all his time farming, our skill player spent all his time honing his abilities (ala SF training mode, practicing chess openings, playing the “actual” game). Does our material player have a legitimate gripe against this skill player ruining HIS game? Or did he make a mistake by entering the skill player’s arena?
If it helps, imagine the polar opposite of Sirlin. Does Nilris, the proponent of the no-skill scrub who’s having way more fun playing his game, have a point?
What I’m really getting at: how can you design a mass market game that appeals to skill players, material players, social players, etc. without alienating any of the others to some degree? Put another way: can the Sirlin game for skill players reach a mass market?
The “flawed” WoW system that’s keeping you, the skill player, playing along with Nilris, the material player, is actually doing exactly what it was designed to!
November 10th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
My two biggest problems are:
1) PvP rewards
2) PvP rankings
Otherwise, I agree that the beginnings of a highly competitive game are there.
The PvP rewards should be gotten rid of. I can see how they’re an incentive to play for those non-competitive types… but, I want them to see the light. PvP competition is fun in itself! Let the RPG rewards stay in the RPG realm. I *do* enjoy that kind of grind… but I don’t see how one’s pvp ranking should cyclicly feed one’s pvp ranking.
As for the ranking system, it obviously should not be based on a time-committment basis. There is a premium for quality of play, it’s true… but it really isn’t enough to reflect the abilities of many competitors.
If it were my game, I would do one of two things to fix the ranking system.
1) Switch to a simple ELO-style system (where a team’s rating is some kind of weighted average of its team’s members).
2) Something much more complicated that tries to judge the roles of different classes differently.
November 11th, 2005 at 7:37 am
The success of WoW (and other muds, historically) cuts away the BS pretense that most “gamers” are really interested in a game, much less competition. My suspicion is that a large part of the market (maybe even a large slice of humanity) have some form of mild obsessive-compulsive disorder. A good “game,” then, is one that stimulates that OCD itch, and gets you to spend the a ton of time scatching it.
WoW is, to me, about the equivalent of popping packing bubblewrap. Of course you can blather on about all the minutae about stats, builds, glitches, etc., but let’s not kid ourselves. The fact that hundreds of thousands of otherwise talentless hillbillies have ALSO reached 60 speaks a lot louder than your attempts to dress WoW up and make it seem challenging. On the other hand, I actually really enjoy popping those bubbles. I admit, it gets old, but maybe if you could have the bubbles change colors, let me compete against other bubble poppers, and wrap the whole enterprise up in some kind of “story” that would make the lowliest fan-fic writer blush with its craptacularity, I would probably be happy popping bubbles for a lot of my life.
People will do a lot of stupid shit for any carrot dangled from a stick, no matter how worthless (c.f. bar bets of any kind, the mardi gras “beads for strip show” exchange, people that drive across town to save 2c/gallon on gas, etc.). WoW is just more of the same. Since we don’t have any idea what “fun” is objectively, cretins can get away with calling WoW “fun,” but deep in their hearts, when they’ve blown off their significant other and are hunched over the monitor, mindlessly grinding away to twink their shaman at 3am despite having to work the next morning, I think we all know there’s something else going on.
As to a larger point, I think this is why the games criticism biz *desperately* needs a good taxonomy to understand the deeply different kinds of games (platformer, FPS, etc. will not do it- those categories describe a lot of overlapping features, or a basic game mechanic at best). A good taxonomy would prevent us from ever even briefly misunderstanding WoW as something other than a pure OCD irritant, and comparing it to things like Street Fighter.
xo,
Seth
November 11th, 2005 at 10:18 am
The only “fair” way to do this that I can see is to keep “competitive” pvp seperate from the strength of the character itself.
Example: take your WoW game. Keep everything exactly the same, except for a seperate pvp area with seperate rankings. When entering this special PvP area, you are instantly stripped of all advantages and abilities of your equipment… only thing equipment does is change your looks. All specific character attributes are removed and resettable. Your level is altered to a specific standard, and you can pick from standardized equipment sets from that point. You set your skills/abilities, and then you pvp. After you come out of it, you’re back to your usual character. In fact, based on your performance with in this battle arena, your character may gain special equipment or stats benefits. The best “competitive” pvpers could gain advantages in the rest of the world.
This setting would allow anyone of any level to competitively pvp against each other, with advantages for doing so, without making the pvp itself unbalanced. Is it ideal? Probably not. Would it work? It could.
This reminds me somewhat of the pokemon rpg as well. Sure, there was the grinding, the training, the battling to make your 4-move-using pokemon stronger… but if you were to play the game competitively, in the online arena, it would “simulate” level 100 pokemon for everyone, you could choose from any legal set of moves that pokemon could have, any specific stats alterations or items possible, and you battle from there. Winning or losing in that system wouldn’t gain you anything on your cartridge though.
It would be interesting to see a game system actually do that though. Joe hardcore level grinder could have his pvp domination of the standard arena, while the tactical sirlins among us would show their mastery in the balanced arena.
November 11th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Unfortunately, Seth is missing the point. World of Warcraft if like 19 games rolled into one, and Seth’s comments apply to almost all those subgames, except the one we’re actually talking about. The battlegrounds are approaching “real competitive game.” They aren’t actually real, but they’re now close enough that I’m excited to make a similar game that is real.
The poster after Seth pretty much has it right. I like his idea that you can win at fair pvp, then have an advantage in pve. I mean, if killing monsters with 40 other people gives you an advantage in pve, why shouldn’t winning matches against humans?
Compare this to current World of Warcraft. In this game, if I want to improve my ability to win at pvp, the very best thing I could do is to leave the battlegrounds and fight monsters! I have ridiculously terrible gear. Zero epics, a few blue items, mostly green. I almost always top the chart in kills, protect the flag alone for way longer than I should be able to, etc. I do just fine. But if I want gear that isn’t terrible, I have to leave the only part of the game that is fun anymore.
How about this as a possible compimise. Take the idea from the post before me (the post after seth). So in these pvp areas, you always have the same level as your opponents, pick from various sets of gear that are all fair, have ELO-based rating systems, etc.
If you are good, you will earn a high rank, which has no gameplay effect at all, but lets you wear nicer looking clothes and have a nifty insignia by your name. You wouldn’t expect me to say this next part, but here goes: if you play a lot (this is tuned to like 10 hours a week, not 15 hours per day like World of Warcraft) then you unlock more gear. The unlocked gear is not better than the default sets. It’s all tradeoffs and only lets you try out different builds and tweaks on your class. The builds/gear that are available by default are just fine and totally capable of winning tournaments.
For a Street Fighter analogy, the character classes might be Ryu, Zangief, Dhalsim. If you play a while, you unlock gear/talent points/whatever that lets you tweak your Ryu to be more like Ken (slightly worse fireball, slightly better dragon punch).
This offends my sensibilites only a little bit. You really should start with full access to everything in a real competitive game(TM). But in exchange for me being slightly offended, this would bait people into playing the game a lot more than they otherwise would, and eventually hook them.
Yes, I’m aware this system is very similar to Guild Wars.
–Sirlin
November 11th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
I’m actually aware that I’m missing the point, but that’s intentional, because I think the basic thrust of this attempt is misguided. Bear with me:
WoW is a fun carrot-on-the-stick, mostly skillless time waster. WoW also has PvP. The only reason anyone mistook this as a good forum for competition was that it sorta seemed like actual competitive games, and players *wanted* it to be a good competitive game because they could win at it, and such a game would create another justification for their otherwise sad investment in WoW.
At first this (PvP) was merely a horrible forum for competition. Then battlegrounds was introduced, slowly raising it to the level of “crappy forum for competition” (it is now a competitive game, but it’s a bad one). It is possible to make it better still, but it’s important first to remember the reason why it’s currently troubled:
Competitive WoW is still bad for reasons that are a direct result of its being built from the WoW backbone. The further you get away from these elements, the less the game has anything to do with WoW (except possibly in name). Deciding how to make it a legit competitive game seems kind of like the fascinating question of how you could build a good helicopter by starting with a Buick Regal. I’m sure it could be done with enough modifications, but if you want a helicopter, there are much easier and better ways to get one than by starting with the Buick, the core elements of which will mostly have been jettisoned by the time you get the Buickopter to fly.
Obviously Blizzard understands good competitive games. It even has some from the Warcraft universe :) World of Warcraft is not a good competitive game, and any good comp. game you could create from it would only become good precisely by sacrificing the elements that make WoW WoW.
xo,
Seth
November 11th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Sirlin, any status on the book?
November 11th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
I don’t get how you can really be discussing it this much. Just because a game has a lot of PvP built into it doesn’t mean that it’s a competitive game at heart.
Like I said before(6th comment, I think), it’s all about the items, or progressing your character. The PvP is there to justify that.
The honor system isn’t even a competition. No one stays at the top once they’ve reached it. They do it to get the weapons, or just to say they did it, and that’s it.
Hell, people used to even leave BG’s if they had a chance at losing because it was faster to earn more honor to get a new game and roll over some random pug. I’m not sure if this is still what people do after the last patch. I quit the game a while ago.
I don’t normally comment on this stuff, but I don’t see how you can try to take this game seriously in a competitive way.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Just a brief comment right now, can’t write up my full response:
The fohguild boards are made up of predominantly PvE players [player vs environment] rather than competitive PvP players, I wouldn’t take too seriously their comments on WoW PvP.
November 11th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
“My answer really should be “Counter-strike doesn’t give any item-advantages before the match even starts, and that’s how it should be.” But these rpg forces are SOOO strong, that as a game designer, I can’t just totally ignore them.”
Firstly MMO’s are about character progression via time invested. It’s why people team up with 39 others in WoW and spend 8hours a night, 7 days a week learning how to kill big dragons, and its why some people spend 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for 3-4 months to earn Rank 14. They’re all doing it for the “Sword of Uberness” that comes as the reward.
The idea of character progression is what separates an MMO from any other that ends when you turn off the console or disconnect from the server, and as you point out its what keeps you playing.
However
There are other ways to make PvP attractive and to make people want to participate, although these ways typically have a penalty for the losers and thus are not in line with Blizzards casual/beginner friendly.
For instance:
a) being able to loot some/all the equipment from corpses of players you kill. [ultima online]
b) being able to seige castles and overtake towns to control the landscape and thus profit.
c) being able to control dungeons and the best xp spots, in order to level faster than everyone else.
So a,b, and c are clearly all rewards for PvP that differ to wow’s rewards, but there is one huge difference. They all suck for the loser. Casual gamers will quit as soon as they die and lose their level 5 “Sword of Newbness”, leaving an extremely competitive but small playerbase.
An example of an MMO that is trying to cater for that limited playerbase is http://www.darkfallonline.com which has a,b,c and has also been in development for 5years+ and “almost beta-ready” for the past two, plus I doubt you’ve heard of it = gg.
Going back to WoW, the PvP shouldn’t be instanced/arena based….proper MMO PvP is worldbased. Blizzard recently promised to restore the pre-bg focus on world pvp but interestingly nothing was said on this topic at Blizzcon. - swept under the carpet maybe?
-Andrew Lee
November 12th, 2005 at 1:22 am
Re: fohguild forums, while it’s true that Fires of Heaven as a guild is predominantly PvE based, their forums are popular among mmo gamers in general and if you can look past the name calling and ego flexing that’s all too common, there’s some good mmo analysis to be found. Blizzard designers read it.
Coincidentally, the FoH forums are down at the moment.
It’s not as if the comments I quoted about the PvP ranking system are inaccurate. The horrible day and night High Warlord trek is what it takes and what some players are slogging through.
Why is “proper” mmo PvP outdoors rather than in an set team-vs-team instance? The upside to having it instanced is you have evenly controlled numbers and both sides knowing they’re going into PvP rather than getting ganked.
November 12th, 2005 at 7:39 am
“Why is “proper” mmo PvP outdoors rather than in an set team-vs-team instance? The upside to having it instanced is you have evenly controlled numbers and both sides knowing they’re going into PvP rather than getting ganked.”
Are you one of those people that creates a character on a PvP server then complains when he gets killed outdoors?
Sirlin already established that PvP in MMO’s is not meant to be fair :
“Note that this is an MMO and it’s not about fair pvp.”
Making PvP instanced and thus limiting the numbers on each team, is just another Blizzard way of making the game more appealing to the casual/mainstream.
-Andrew Lee
November 12th, 2005 at 11:31 am
No, I don’t complain. I play on a PvP server and like it, in fact.
I wasn’t attacking you by the way - it was a genuine question. Is it because outdoor PvP is more on the spur of the moment, holds more surprises, and has a bit of mystery as to who you’re going to be matched up against? Is there more to it than that?
The upsides to instanced PvP that I mentioned are ones applicable to both “carebears” and PvP fans alike - even numbers and both sides looking to PvP versus getting ganked.
November 12th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Not really adding anything to the discussion;
just saying that reading Zangief/Dhalsim/Ryu WoW classes/talent builds/item sets that are available due to “fighting enemy, not teammates” play… sounds very exciting to me.
Many players might find it a bummer NOT to be able to use the items my character has in PvP… then again, it’s BECAUSE my level 60 has blue gear and the others purple that I hardly play pvp at all.
For weeks I’ve been thinking: “after the onyxia/DM/MC/BL runs, the pvp is coming”. And I don’t like that.
I would have appreciated it much more if I could enjoy the CTF action, without thinking “I’ll start winning when I have the same gear as my opponent(in four months, maybe…)”
Make an alternative PvP battleground with “fair” equipment, that gets better as you level up (but you still fight against players of your own level), where the rewards are more diversity than power (think: more character types to choose from)…
That idea really excites me.
(btw, I have no experience with Guild Wars)
November 12th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
I am not trying to “fix” World of Warcraft pvp. They are obviously fucking up right now, and there is little hope for them. But, imagine just the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft as a totally separate game made by a separate developer. Forget World of Warcraft. How could that game be fair and addictive. THAT is the question. And Seth, it’s not just any old random starting point. Battlegrounds give you a lot of moves (say 30 moves, rather than 2 in a first person shooter) and you don’t have to aim (aiming is not a real skill). These are rare properties and they ARE a good starting point for a new gmae.
World pvp is total trash. Not sure why anyone is supporting that. It’s a test of how many friends you have around at the time. Instanced pvp is at least an attempt at being fair with equal numbers of players on both sides and a beginning, middle, and end. Instanced pvp has clear rules about whether you won or not. Me saying that “pvp in MMOs is not meant to be fair” is more of a cut on MMOs than a free ticket to have shitty world pvp. This is totally decide the point, so forget it.
One player made this suggestion to me for the new theoretical game. There is a period of time X where you really are very limited in what moves you have. During X, it’s not a fair competitive game. But, you have no idea how to play anyway during this time. This X-period is designed to bait you and addict you with RPG-like improvements to your character. Post-X, you are playing a fair competitive game. He argues that what you give up during this time (no fair fights) is justified (really hooks people). And once they pass that hump, it’s all fair and ways to advance your character are msotly illusionary.
He suggested that X = 40 hours.
Interesting idea, but I’m not convinced yet. In my theoretical game, it’s a very hard pill to swallow that you shouldn’t be at 100% full strength the first minute of the game. He thought my idea of letting you earn different moves/builts/talents that are not better, just different was a weak bait to keep him playing. Is he right? Or is the answer that he should just play shitty World of Warcraft pvp because he wouldn’t appreciate fair competition if it bit him on the nose?
–Sirlin
November 16th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
One thing that nobody has mentioned yet in this line of posting is PVP (and arguably general) skill as a result of playing battlegrounds.
As an example, take Arathi Basin (which I do a lot of - partly for the rewards admittedly, but also because it is insanely fun). I view AB interactions on multiple levels.
a) 1v1 battle. (exclude help for the moment - a good portion of assaults wille ventually result in “help” arriving, and will move on to case B) In this case typically a defender and an assaulter, and happens more often than one thinks. Unless there is a huge mismatch in gear (which occurs very rarely), this matchup will go to the one with more skill. I know this because I only have 2 epics of mild strength (amulet of the darkmoon, and darkmoon faire card: maelstrom), and only blue gear. Playing battlegrounds many times has allowed me to learn the strengths and weaknesses of other characters that I would otherwise be unable to do so. Duels aren’t as “real”, because there, the results are slightly more controlled. I think skill plays a HUGE factor in this matchup, much more than gear. I would say its extremely balanced.
b) XvsY battle. In this case, various tactics and strategies are requird, as in any battle. In this case, superior tactics, and leadership will trump superior gear. Again, having vast experience in this will not only make you and perhaps your teamates superior players in battlegrounds, but could hone general skills required in PVP. There is definitely some skill and tactics that can be learned even when significantly outnumbered (2v1, 5v3), regardless of gear. This case is also well balanced.
So what about teams that have everything else that is equal, but one has Uber Gear, and the other doesn’t. In that case, the Uber Geared team should win, and rightly so. Similar to investment in “out of game” items such as chess (reading books, studying up on opponents), Uber geared people have invested time outside of the battleground to prepare themself for the battleground. If I invest the time or money to have my own SF2 machine at home to practice on, that is not an “unfair” advantage. If I read books on chess, and research opening moves, where as you do not that is also not unfair.
I do agree that the PVP system itself is broken, and since that isn’t the topic for this post, I’ll avoid it, but, I think the battlegrounds themselves, function just fine as they are, within the context of WOW.
As for the faction rewards. Well, they are partly a marketing hook for Blizzard to get people hooked onto BG’s, but I don’t believe that the rewards are signifcantly better than the rewards that anyone else who did soley PVE could acquire on MC runs, or other high end instances, and therefore, are balanced and fair
There is a benefit to playing a lot of BG, even if you don’t count the rewards of gear, or potential pvp skills - hones your skill. The benefit of better skill? Higher survivability within BG’s and within the rest of the world (at least on a PVP server) as a result of your skill. If you don’t believe me, try it. I’ve pretty much have had the same gear since I’ve started BG’s, but I’m sure my survivability has gone up, especially in those “marginal” cases (when it’s not 10vs1).
-Paisky
November 16th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Reading a chess book to better one’s self is fine and good, but what would happen if grandmasters were able to use two queens in all matches while lesser opponents could not? The learning curve falls apart.
Buying a SF2 practice machine is nice, but I can’t take it with me to a tournament and use it to smash my enemies. All I obtain is what increases internally from it.
External influences like gear are advantages which have nothing to do with skill. A player’s external influences might increse with his skill, but that is not guaranteed. Nor is the inverse. The more direcly a competitive system rewards skill and blocks out other aspects save for a bit of variance, the purer it is. In my experience, this purity makes a game better.
–BDT
November 16th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
There are several points which I’d like to make which people haven’t yet touched on:
1) Classes are not created equal in WoW PvP
An epic-ed out level 60 Priest or Mage will be absolutely flattened by an epiced-out 60 Warrior in 1v1 if the warrior has any skill at all. There’s a reason cloth classes complain about getting “two-shotted” by melee classes. Blizzard actually admitted at Blizcon to scrapping a 1v1 “gladiator” style bg because of this issue - the healer classes always died and Bliz thought that this would be too frustrating for them.
However, this leads to…
2) In group PvP, having priests or druids (provided they actually heal), is a dominating factor. The best PvP spec for a priest in high end “competitive” PvP is holy, not shadow. This is because WoW PvP was conceived as a group activity, and so the analogies to single player games like Street Fighter are misleading. There can be some skill involved in a solo matchup, but the thrust of it is teamwork. If you wanted to make it “fair” by removing all the RPG-obtained items, the teams which play together in MC and BWL and so on would still destroy PUGs because they know their roles and are used to working together toward objectives.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:03 am
I’ve made this point on other forums, and I will make it here. PvP fans fall into two groups - peopel who want a test of skill, fome “fair” PvP, and people who want a free-for-all sort of atmosphere.
One of these is not better or worse than the other. They are just different. Understanding that there are two distinct groups of PvP fans is very important.
Sirlin is obviously a fan of “fair” PvP. He says normal world PvP is trash. But for some people, the normal world PvP is a blast. These are the same people that enjoyed UO in the early days. (Or at least overlap with that group)
It just depends on what you are after. Unfortunately, WoW is much more suited for normal world PvP than “fair” PvP, because of the nature of MMORPGs - spend time to get powerful. That is the core tenet of the genre right now.
I would also point out that the battlegrounds in WoW have a lot of noise in the form of random side missions and such. This is similar to what was done in War3 - and goes a long way towards explaining why War3 was worse than Starcraft.
Even in what is supposed to be a competitive environment like an RTS or a battleground, Blizzard can’t help but throw in some random RPG-esque side mission stuff. I’m not sure they could create a truly competitive game if they tried any more.
My final comment on WoW: boring as hell.
James M
November 17th, 2005 at 1:18 am
Side note. Seth wrote:
“As to a larger point, I think this is why the games criticism biz *desperately* needs a good taxonomy to understand the deeply different “
There is a games criticism biz?
I’ve had this discussion with people before - game magazines and sites today are to games like Fangoria is to movies. They aren’t criticism or review, just fanboy productions and breathy hype machines.
A lot of this is because people who work for game magazines and websites tend to be young, immature, and secretly covet a real position in the games industry. (AKA are fanboys) I’ve never seen a serious attempt at approaching game criticism the way literary and film criticism are approached.
Again comparing to other media, Fangoria makes money with ads aimed at horror film fans. It can’t be overly negative. The Chicago Sun times, however, makes money off of general purpose ads, and consequently movie reviews can be as brutal as they want. Serious criticism can’t occur when it will inevitably negatively impact the bottom line.
It would be really interesting to see a bunch of serious minded people try to approach the subject in a vaguely rigorous manner.
November 17th, 2005 at 7:15 am
I’d like to respond to BDT’s comments to my original comments.
BDT implies that it is not “fair” to have UBER geared people in battlegrounds vs. non UBER geared people. I’d contend it is. Real World PVP is not fair because it’s not balanced (numbers, level, etc.), and there really aren’t any real “rules”
He states that reading chess books, buying an SF2 machine, and having UBER gear for the purposes of battlegrounds are not the same. (Implying that the first 2 are fair, and the latter not). However, in the case of all three, the key investment is the same –> Time. IN the time that you read chess books, you get additional knowledge regarding opening moves, etc. IN the additional time that you have available to you while having your SF2 machine, you can hone your skills better. In the time that you take to farm for better gear, well… you get better gear. However, each of these time investments also have drawbacks. If you are reading chess books, you’re not playing chess, and lose the knowledge that could be gained by playing additional matches. If you spend all your additional time playing on your own SF2 machine (presumably either by yourself or a few people), you lose the benefit of playing different people with different playing styles. If you spend all your time accumulating UBER gear in PVE instances, you lose the benefit of learning the intracacies of PVP.
Additionally, I’d also like to point out that like in any competitive game, the “competitive” people start to know each other. They start developing reputations, and you learn their tendencies. I’ve used those tendencies many times to my advantage. If you know player X always guards the stables, and you know he likes to stand in one area shadowmelded.. you can get the jump on him, instead of his getting the jump on you. I would say surprise is a significant advantage, and is easily comparable to a gear advantage in battle.
One guy who spent 100 hours getting PVE gear will not know these tendencies whereas one guy who spent 100 hours getting beat down by the elite team on the Alliance side will.
So in short, the presence of UBER gear is only the output of the investment that a player put in - time.
All right, so let’s compare the benefits then. A “100 hour equivalent” UBER geared person will probably have run, say, 25 MC runs. (assuming very competent people) Which will likely yield him 3 epics, let’s say. On the other hand, a “100 hour equivalent” BG person would have played 200 matches worth of say, Arathi Basin in that same time. How is it unfair that the person who spent his time getting epics will have better gear than the guy who has 200 hours of knowledge of BG’s, and doing PVP with other classes? Do we REALLY think that the 3 epic guy will necessarily “own” the guy who spent their time doing BG’s? Should the guy who did 25 MC runs get NO benefit from his time in BG? The guy who did BG for 100 hours does have a benefit in the rest of the world - he’s a LOT harder to gank because he knows his class, and he knows other classes.
Of course, an interesting question to ask is, will someone with 100000 hours of high end “gear equivalent” beat someone with 100000 hours of “BG equivalent”. In that case, probably yes, but the gap in gear won’t be that big because in that 100000 hours, the BG guy will have gotten some gear upgrades, although not as much as the instance guy.
Physical benefits aren’t necessarily better or worse than intangible benefits, such as skill, experience, knowing the tendencies of your opponent, etc, and as such, whenver benefits are considered, whether physical or not, they should be considered as part of the overall equation.
For something to be fair, it needs to be accessible to those who are willing to invest. IN WOW, both gear, and experience are widely available to those who are able to invest the time. Part of the problem with the PVP ranking system is that the time required to get GM/HW is NOT readily available to a single person, and that certain characters must surely break the spirit of the game (e.g. account sharing) to achieve that high rank.
As to Coeus’s point regarding the balance between cloth/plate wearer. (I agree that classes are not created equal, but I think it is balanced I always hear everyone complaining about being pwned by priests also). The solution is simple. If you’re a cloth wearer, group to your advantage - Find a tank and follow him around. If a class totally pwned regardless of whether he was in a group or not, then I could see that being a problem. But I don’t think you can really say that class X will always dominate class Y whether he/she is in a group or not.
–Paisky
November 18th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
“How could that game be fair and addictive. THAT is the question.”
You need a game with discoverable unknowns. A game is only addictive/fun when you don’t know what will happen. For example, Tic-Tac-Toe is “fun” until you figure out how to draw every game to a stalemate. Tic-Tac-Toe has nine opening moves, right? Not so fast, there are really only three possible moves: corner, edge, or center. Wrong again, only a corner or center move is “safe”. Once a starting move has been made, that player either wins or, if the other player has figured out Tic-Tac-Toe, ties. Once the discoverable unknowns are discovered the game ceases to be fun.
A game could have many layers of discoverable unknowns. For example, in Magic the Gathering there are discoverable unknowns in deck construction and in gameplay. Examining deck construction reveals that there are infinitely more combinations of discoverable unknowns than Tic-Tac-Toe. Yet over time the “metagame” degenerates into an ellaborate paper-rock-scissors scheme similar to Tic-Tac-Toe. The once near-infinite combinations of discoverable unknowns becomes a more practical feasiable set of discoverable unknowns. Eventually there are a finite set of ways to construct your deck and little enjoyment is derived from deck construction because all the feasible ways have been discovered. It is usually at this point that discoverable unknowns in gameplay become a bigger focus. And just as those discoverable unknowns are exhuasted new ones are injected into the system with the introduction of a new set. Discoverable unknowns are a big part of why Magic is so addictive and fair.
Discoverable unknowns are a very broad concept. Both a mental tactic and a virtual object could be discoverable unknowns. In quake 1 there was a very difficult shortcut jump that could be made to obtain quad damage even when you did not control that area. Knowing this tactic exists is a first discoverable unknown and actually being capable of executing the jump consistently was a completely seperate discoverable unknown. Further, the same could be true of an Uber Sword of Greatness. Knowledge of its existance and how to obtain it is one discoverable unknown, while actually performing the requisites to obtain it is a seperate discoverable unknown.
Hence a game can be fair and addictive by managing the rise and fall of discoverable unknowns. A completely fair game occurs whenever two players have discovered the exact same number of discoverable unknowns resulting in a stalemate. Usually this only occurs when all discoverable unknowns are discovered.
World of Warcraft has so many layers of discoverable unknowns right now. It is a very rare occurence that a truly fair fight occurs. However, it is still a finite amount and as time passes some people get closer to equity by discovering those unknowns.
an be applied veryto games across the board. For example, look to other Blizzard games such as Starcraft and Warcraft. Each patch or expansion breathed new life into the game by replacing discovered unknowns with discoverABLE unknowns.
“[A]iming is not a real skill”. Sirlin I have the utmost respect for you, but this statement really gets under my skin. Could you explain why aiming is not a real skill? I would love to have a more in-depth conversation about that, but first I want to know why you think that.
November 19th, 2005 at 4:20 am
When my friend and I discuss games, he uses the term ‘artificial difficulty.’ It may not be the standard term but he’s referring to things that make a game harder or more challenging. This first came up a while back when we were making mario levels on our graphing calculators. We would make levels throughout the day then in our last class, art, which we had together, we’d exchange levels and play them. We’d pass them on to others and many would say “I can make a harder level than that!” Of course they could. Make mario enter the level falling into a pit with no platform in sight and you have not a ‘challenging’ level, but an impossibly hard one. Other things like making the AI block more often, or moves doing more damage are artificial and high level equips (all equipment) do that same thing. For a game to be fair, most of the artifice needs to be removed. Artificial acquisition of in-game material items falls outside the realm of competition. It is indeed tough to combine the two. The only thing that comes close in my mind is separation of the artificial aspects of the items during competition. (in Soul Calibur 3, weapon effects are disabled in vs). Yet this still doesn’t combine the two. Another thought, although I don’t like the idea, is fighting fire with fire. If someone has certain things, then boost something else for the other player. In the game Go it’s almost always standard to use the handicap rule. Why? Because black HAS to go first. It’s the only advantage that couldn’t be taken out so it was compromised by giving white extra points to start with. But equips can be taken out. A bit of an aside, the ladder system reminds me of other things in other games that I hate, yet dont. It’s tough. The idea of rewarding good performance. Get more points, get more lives. A good player is going to die less so why do they get an advantage. In real life people receive scholarships. The other day my sister got a parking ticket and I asked her if she wished she got money for everytime she parked in the right spot. With the ticket in her hand she said “I don’t think people should be rewarded for good behavior.” However, another dilemma arises when I consider just frames in fighting games and the drift boosts in mario kart. If you perform better, you get a better result. Tough.
November 20th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Paisky, you keep getting caught up on this concept. Taking a material advantage into a game is NOT the same as, well, not taking one into the game. Starting a game with two queens instead of one, with epic-gear rather than normal gear, or with a Ryu fireball that does more damage…those are all material differences.
Reading a book about how to play a game, practising against good people, and developing actual skills and knowledge about a game are not material advantages. Those are all rolled up into the category of “actual skill,” and those are what you are supposed to take into a fair competitive game.
Consider that if you gave a scrub and I a strategy guide about how to play a new game. We both read it, but I win because I am more likely to deeply understand that strategy. All is right in the world. Now imagine that the scrub makes up for his poor understanding of the strategy guide by starting with more pieces than me (like an extra queen). Those are not the same concepts at all. Please don’t advocate material advantages as “fair” is a real competitive game.
To Coeus, in World of Warcraft, classes aren’t balanced to be fair 1on1. This is correct, and it was a retarded decision on Blizzard’s part in my opinion. You don’t have to worry about that in the theoretical game I’m trying to come up with here.
Dustin, we have a minor disagreement here. To one type of player, “Once everthing is known about a certain game, they are ready to stop playing.” But to me, “Once everything is known about a certain game, I am ready to start playing. Or to quit because the game is degenerate, if that’s the case.”
I’d be perfectly happy playing a game that never changed, even when I know everything about it. The reason is that I don’t know everything about the opponent. I know quite a bit about English, but I still enjoy debating. English (the game) is only the medium of that houses the fun (the competition itself).
Also to Dustin,
“Aiming is not a real skill.”–Sirlin
So you want me to explain that, heh. I guess step 1 is to explain that there exist SOME things at all that “aren’t real skills,” at least in some contexts. For example, juggling 2 balls in one hand is a “skill” in some sense. It is “a skill that matters” in some kind of juggling tournament, perhaps. But imagine a new game called “Basketball 2.” This game is exactly like regular basketball, except you must also juggle two tennis balls in one hand. The game is really dumb, because it’s rewarding a skill that no one cares about, really.
In competitive games, there are skills that matter a lot (and I discuss in my book which ones I think ultimately matter the most). Ability to read the opponent and get in their head. Ability to judge which moves/pieces/actions in a game are effective and which ones are not, and ability to judge the relative value of moves/pieces/actions. Knowledge of how the guessing games in the game are constructed. I could go on. “Aiming” is certainly not on the list. It’s a pretty boring skill. I mean, let’s say you can aim twice as well as I can aim. I play AimGuy03 a competitive match of…some game where you have to aim. Let’s assume for arguement’s sake that I’m 10% better than AimGuy03 in all those great factors that matter like reading the opponent, understanding the game iteslf, etc. But he’s way better at aiming so I lose. So, um, this game is kinda dumb because it’s rewarding weird, random stuff. Why not reward tap-dancing or cake-baking or something during a match of capture the flag? Capture the flag is tightly linked to “ability to aim” in the minds of gamers, but I still contend that it’s an extraneous skill. Warsong Gultch in World of Warcraft is a capture the flag game with no aiming, and it is a “better” game because it eliminates one extraneous skill. Too bad it then ruins it by adding in big material advantages like gear.
You’ll probably say “you only talk down on aiming because you are not good at it.” Really, it’s more the other way around. I’m not that good at it, becuase I never valued it as a thing to care about in the first place.
Damn, I let this thread get hijacked, lol. Anyone have a summary of what we can do to be addictive, yet still fair?
–Sirlin
November 20th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
That’s a bad question. It’s not like those things are often mutually exclusive. Street Fighter is addictive and fair. For some people chess is addictive and fair.
What you are really asking is how can a WOW-style battleground be “addictive” and fair, where addictive is the tried and true MMORPG grind for goodies paradigm.
There is really only one answer - the stuff you grind for has to be basically irrelevant to the actual gameplay. Then the question becomes how do you make grinding for irrelevant things addictive?
One man’s addictive is another man’s boring.
James M
November 21st, 2005 at 12:31 am
Sirlin defines fairness in such a way that his question is hard to answer in a character development-focused MMORPG. In a sense of “equal opportunity” fairness, we all start out with the same level 1 characters, but what he’s talking about is “everyone in a BG has equal gear, so that skill is all that matters.” The most “absolute” way to get to “pure skill” matches would be to have cross-realm BG “tournaments” with only a standardized set of greens and blues allowed… leave your purples at the door. There would be no honor awarded for winning, just a WC3-style ladder with the top teams posted each week. The people who care about skill could play in these, and the honor farmers could still brandish their hard-won purples in realm-specific BG’s. Maybe the people really high up on the ladder would get some sort of additional title when you /inspect them or something. Recognition like that, and in public rankings on worldofwarcraft.com, would be as addictive as purples to many players.
However, this system strays too far towards fairness to meet both of Sirlin’s two goals of fairness and gear development-addictiveness. A second (but imperfect) solution, is letting the current BG system continue, but make it cross-realm and have matched games based on - say - a previous win/loss ratio. Currently it’s like Kasparov gets a second queen because he’s a grand master. However, this shouldn’t matter if he’d only be playing other grand masters, and all international masters (with an extra rook) are only playing each other etc. The World of Warcraft BG system fails because it’s tied to the realms, and there are too few groups playing per realm at any one time to match up epic’ed out winning groups with other epic’ed groups, and PUG’s with PUG’s. If BG’s were cross-server and matched, both of Sirlin’s conditions would roughly be met because there would be far more equality between opponents. Unfortunately, this could lead to the situation where an awesome group of non-MC geared ppl with blues gets so good they consistently are matched with the people with purples… don’t know how to solve that except with solution 1.
As a side note, I wouldn’t award a token of honor to groups which lose WSG or AB in under 5 minutes… force them to fucking try a bit instead of just farming honor.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:49 am
One factor which I haven’t seen accounted for here when it comes to gear being a factor in PvP is planning. When evaluating my overall enjoyment of PvP, the ability to “plan” a character which is better than other player’s characters is a large factor. Allow me to explain with an example:
In my guild, there are many other Warriors of all talent specializations. For our first ten Molten Core runs, however, I was third in line to tank despite my being specced mainly for damage. Why? Because I had planned and aquired a set of items tailored for tanking which gave me advantaged in that activity which outweighed those given for talent point specialization. The tanking specced Warriors which were behind me in preference for tanking did not have worse gear than I did in terms of input of time, etc, they simply went for gear such as the Valor set instead of looking at what gear would actually be most effective and targeting it for aquisition.
The same situation could potentially apply in PvP. It does to a degree: there are many “rare” (ie “blue”) items which are nearly as good as “epic” items. For example, there is no Plate legpeice for a Warrior clearly superior to Eldrich Reinforced Legplates, which are not an epic item. This is an exception, however, normally epic items are clearly superior. The problem is that currently, much less planning is required, because there are only three ways to get “epic” gear: BG rewards, endgame instances, and PvP Honor grind. This lack of variety leads to diminished variety and therefor dilutes planning as a competitive aspect.
Functioning ideally, planning should give advantages similar to those in Magic or other TCGs: investment is required outside the game (in Magic, money and/or trading skills), which ideally acts as a barrier to force players to plan out choices which then affect the game environment. So, if I choose to focus my resources on aquiring a Black Lotus because I’ve noticed how potentially powerful it is, I have less time/money/cards with which to aquire a Time Walk. If I run DM West to aquire Eldrich Reinforced Legplates, I have less time to run whereever the hell Legplates of Valor drop to aquire them.
Functioning properly, the top end of competition should be between those who are the best “planners” if there is a design deicision made to have planning before the beginning of the actual game be a factor. I would contend that it is a skilled activity and, when executed properly, enhances some competitive environments. It isn’t implimented as well as I’d like to see it in WoW, but were one to remove epics other than the very rare ones found in 5-15 player instances, it actually would be pretty close. Likewise, where epics available through a wider variety of routes, it would be likewise more a matter of planning as to who gained an advantage in PvP through them.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:56 am
As an addendum to that, I should note that there is an element of planning in what epic gear one aquires in raiding. For example, I got an Obsidian Edged Blade and Gauntlets of Might last night, after having saved DKP for 10 runs to get first choice on those items. Other players spent DKP on beneficial, but less optimal for my purposes items. I could have optimized further by holding out for Flameguard Gauntlets, but since Gauntlets of Might are the second best hand-peice for PvP Warriors, I consider them an acceptable comprimise. The problem lies in a relative lack of variety in manners by which one can aquire epic items and the high barrier to entry which must be jumped to aquire them
- Davon.
November 21st, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Sirlin – I believe that we have a difference opinion of what constitutes “fair playâ€. You, and I’m sure others define something to be “fair†if it passes the following test:
–Given single/collection of entities of equal skill, will each entity/collection of entities win a roughly equal number of times over repeated trials?
By this definition, then yes, BG’s in WOW are extremely unfair, and the proposed solution of “leave your purples at the door†work (although I believe that this would go directly against the motivation of certain gameplayer types – to be covered later).
My definition of “fair†is based on this test:
–Given single/collection of entities of equal preparation, will each entity/collection of entities win a roughly equal number of times over repeated trials?
To move into the issue of how to be addictive, but fair, there are certain characteristics of gamers, which I believe, reside in each of us:
a) Casual Gamer – This is the tendency to play games for “fun†or social reasons. These people play because their friends play, they like the pretty colors, night elves are neat/sexy, whatever. The puzzle fighter characters are cute! or Ooo.. nice halloween decorations, etc.” The casual gamer’s definition of “fair†most likely means: “If I spend X amount of time over a long period of time, no matter how spread out, I should have equipment/skill that is equivalent to someone who spent an intense period of time within a short period. These sort or people are the ones who whine about gettting ganked “That’s not fair! ZOMG, level 60 pally ganking a level 20 priestâ€, who complain that they don’t have epics because they’re not in a big guild, etc. and demand that because they’re casual gamers, the bar should be lowered for everyone to get epics via “attainable†quests.
b) Money Farmers – This is the tendency to play games to “save†for the “ultimate†moment where one can somehow “purchase†the ultimate gear. (even though the best ultimate gear probably isn’t purchasable) (I will ignore the farmers who farm for money since they’re not playing a “gameâ€.). These people spend a significant of time taking time studying, and learning the economic tendencies of the game, and taking advantage of them, to further their ability to learn more about economic tendencies, to earn more money, etc. This person’s definition of “fair†is, “It’s fair only if everyone can buy it, if they have enough moneyâ€
c) Status Farmers – These are the people who *have* to have the best gear, or best rank, or best (insert noun here) no matter what it takes, or how long it takes. These guys go for all purples, and other (arguably) useless “status symbolsâ€. (e.g. High Warlord, Grand Marshal) These guys might be considered “hardcoreâ€, but really are only a subset of hardcore (see bullies and competitors). They value EXTREMLEY HIGHLY the fact that they’ve done 1000 MC runs to get the full tier 2 epic set, and are on their way to acquiring thunderfury, if only those blasted bindings of the windseeker would drop. A key point to note here is: The gear itself is the end, not a means. That and if someone else has the same tier 2 epic set and got Thunderfury first… well.. he must have cheated somehow… I’ll get thunderfury2!â€. This person’s definition of fair is: “It’s fair only if anyone who’s as “leet†as me can get itâ€. In actuality, these guys are usually well equipped, but average in skill at best, unless they have strong e) tendencies also.
d) Bullies – These are the people whose ultimate goal is to further their quest to bully others. This means that anything that they can do to further their ability to gank/pvp/grief, they WILL do. So, they will show the tendency of status farmers, but want the gear to use so that they’ll be better able to kill anyone who they happen across. This person’s definition of fair is: “Why isn’t it fair? See my hammer of godliness – SMASH WOOHOO 8k crit on level 20 mage!â€. These people are well equipped and can be very skilled (but usually compensate their average skill with their equipment). The gear here is a means to better bullying.
e) Competitors – These people play the game to compete, and see skill as a prerequisite of being good while gear is a benefit of being good. Competitors in WOW include the guilds who race to be the first to “down†a certain new boss, forge a legendary weapon, best in BG’s, solve a tough riddle, etc.. They are usually well geared, because by being competitive, they happen across good gear, but aren’t into acquiring gear for the sake of acquring gear. The gear is a byproduct of being good at competing. This person’s definition of fair is: “It’s fair if it’s a level playing fieldâ€. These people are well equipped and very skilled. (ultimately)
So how does WOW fit into this, and why am I arguing that BG’s is fair even if 1 side has all epics, and 1 side doesn’t?
The people who have strong a) and strong b) tendencies don’t play BG’s because it doesn’t further their goals. BG’s appeal to people with c) d) and e) tendencies. BG’s (especially arathi basin) is extremely well suited for those who are farming for status (and perhaps for gear). Those who are bullies are happy too since the people “come to them†to get pwned, and oh btw, they also get some gear to help them bully. People who are in group e) may think that it’s unfair, but are usually geared well enough that the difference isn’t humongous, or seek the challenge of beating well known teams/guilds in this matter. By eliminating the gear you could bring in/use/get in BG’s, then you’ve eliminated some of c) (hrmm.. can’t show off my gear here) The bullies will also be much less likely to play BG’s (what do you mean my sword of pwnage can’t be used here?), and you’ll be left with pretty much e) that would play BG’s. (and skilled subsets of c) and d). By eliminating the “earned†right to use epics in BG’s, you’ve eliminated a (probably) significant part of the reason that certain types play.
On the other hand, if you increase the benefit for each of those guys (e.g. more honor for c), and more “ways†to bully (I’m a mage that can shoot arrows, but only in BG’s!), then you might outweigh any of the negative effects.
So what’s the breakdown in a MMPORG of personality types? I have no idea, but I would posit that 50% of players are strong a) tendency, but probably account for a much
November 21st, 2005 at 7:28 pm
Davon,
I am completely on board with counting your “planning” in the “skill pile” rather than the “garbage pile.” Planning is a fine thing that you are allowed to take into a competitive game. If you gave me a menu where I could click on all the gear and talents I wanted right before going into a match, that would be great. Making all of the gear/talents instantly accessible would HELP the good planner win more than the bad planner, which is exactly what we want.
Here is the potential problem, which Paisky just won’t give up on. Imagine that instead of a nice, quick menu, the only way to configure your gear/talents was if you–I don’t know–watched the movie Beverly Hills Cop 3 about 900 times. Some people will watch this move 900 times and they will get better gear and bring a material advantage into the match (the ultimate in poor design of a fair game). Other players won’t watch the movie 900 times, or at all, and they won’t get to take part in the planning.
So the question is, why are we valuing watching this movie 900 times? It’s a silly thing to place any value on. Similarly, why are we valuing spending time farming materials or killing monsters with 40 other people? These activities are just as irrelevant to competitive play (such as battlegrounds) as watching Beverly Hills Cop 3 900 times. There is no reason to reward people who do this, and no reason to give them cool titles like “hardcore.” I am not “casual” because I don’t fight monsters with 40 people. Quite the opposite.
And painsky, I find your entire definition of Casual Gamer to be offensive. Getting “ganked” by someone 40 levels above you is a totally valid complaint. Any actual “hardcore player” would want a fair playfield, not a lopsided one. And getting upset that someone who does lame activity A (raiding) and gets material advantages, while doing good activity B (winning, or using self-reliance to do a hard thing by yourself) gets you next to nothing…that’s also a valid complaint. Again, these are the complaints of thoughtful hardcore players, not the misinformed whines from casuals, as you make them out to be.
I have spent many hours a day for a month straight in battlegrounds and have laughable gear compared to anyone who raids. Why is that? Because warcraft has a really bad system in place. Let’s not kid ourselves on that, and just move past it. Ok, enough on that rant.
Are sports unfair because of salary differences between teams? I don’t know…yes? I have no clue, and certainly made no claims about professional basketball being fair. Let’s drop that example right now.
Magic: the Gathering was mentioned as potentiall unfair because different people have different access to cards. At the pro level, anyone has 100% access to any card he wants. In this setting, the game is fair and rewards planners well (yay). If you have less than $X to spend and you DON’T have full access to all cards, then Magic is a horrifically bad game that you should not consider playing. From now on, if I ever mention Magic, you should know I’m referring to “Magic where all competitors have full access to all cards.”
November 21st, 2005 at 11:45 pm
“Making all of the gear/talents instantly accessible” may or may not be going to far, depending on one’s design goals. Since medium and long-term planning are worthy skills, allowing changes to planning factors (ie, gear/talents) to be instant and costless may be detrimental to a game. That’s why in Magic tournaments, for example, you are not allowed to make changes to your deck after you have registered for the tournament. Constructed (pre-made deck) tournaments are supposed to test the player’s ability to plan a deck in advance of the tournament. Other formats such as sealed (competitors create decks from a fixed number of packs made available to them) and draft (competitors take turns selecting cards with which to create decks from a shared pool) test more immediate planning skills.
How much of a barrier one wants to put between the player and options is a design choice, but it is reasonable to assume that forcing players into irrelevant, boring, and repetitive tasks for long periods of time is a poor choice. Also, at the top level of competition, I would agree that every player should have access to all the choices, and this state should not be unreasonably difficulty for a dedicated player to reach.
Obviously, World of Warcraft fails to meet these objectives. I’m not sure this is entirely a failure of design principles, however, so much as it is of execution. The first design feature that has to be noted is that World of Warcraft is not a purely competitive game. That, by nature, will dilute is competitive elements, though an optimal game need not do so entirely. The second element is that World of Warcraft is a game that falls within a genre and a sub-genre, those being Role Playing Game and Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game respectively. These sub/genres come laden with the expectation that there will be themed planning elements (skills/items) that will be aquired in the course of overcoming themed challenges (adventures/quests/dungeons/pvp). It is also expected that these elements will then be useable in every element of the game, and segregation of one element (pvp) in this regard would be unpopular.
This can be a positive factor for PvP, if accounted for properly. Most TCG players enjoy opening card packs and seeing what’s insdide, and most also enjoy trading and collecting cards. Many cards are usually “dead” from a competitive perspective (though many of these are “sleepers” waiting for a use). This is nevertheless positive, because many of these “dead” cards are also themed in terms of game functioned (interesting, but impractical) or flavour (big monsters, famous characters, etc), and are also collectable. These make the game interesting for less competitive players, and therefor make the game more popular, drawing in both competitive and casual players.
If we exclude 20-40 player raids from the equasion (and perhaps raise drop rates on certain items), this is not too far removed from what we see in World of Warcraft. Players aquire their resources in a themed environment which one assumes they enjoy. Few rewards are out of reach of a dedicated player, since even a 15 man raid only takes ~3 hours to complete and is a pretty relaxed experience.
Raiding is a problem, however. The crux of the matter is this: there is a dedicated base for the raiding experience. The difficulty of raiding new content for a serious guild shouldn’t be taken lightly. First and formost, finding and organizing 60 dedicated players (the bare minimum to reliably field 40 on a given night) is a challenge. Most boss encounters in 20+ player raids are essentially puzzles placed by the designers for the players to figure out, though the puzzles usually have multiple acceptable solutions. Finding these solutions can be extraordinarily difficult, which is why most guilds take a long time to progress past Chromaggus and then past stage 1 Nefarian, etc (content is also often bugged and unpassable). Even if you do have a strategy with you, execution can take time, and many guilds find they have to revamp strategies to fit their prefered approached and class balance.
The point is that, until content reaches “farm mode” for these players, the challenges they overcome are significant. Since items are part of both their own planning process and a barrier between levels of content, they expect to gain access to it through their activities. Also, the best or near-best items for their purposes should be available through raiding, since do make it otherwise would force them into doing other activities just to raid optimally (ie, put them in the current situation faced by PvPers). However, there will always be overlap, and powerful raiding items will always also be powerful PvP items.
Because the genre essentially forbids segregating content (which also would harm casual players and players which participate in multiple aspects of the game), this creates a problem. However, I think it is only a serious problem when one aspect of the game is able to more reliably access its planning elements than others. In short, it is easier to raid for good items than it is to PvP for them (though many good items and some of the best, even short of the top honor ranks, are obtained through PvP). The result is that raiders have a serious PvP advantage over PvPers, which makes no sense whatsoever.
There is one makeshift solution which is popular, imported from Dark Age of Camelot: the 10-19 battlegrounds. Level 10-19 planning elements are much more easily available than later game items, and the lower barrier to entry allows for quick access to multiple classes. Even medium population PvE servers often have active 10-19 and even 20-29 battle grounds frequented by skilled PvP players. So, there is a work around, but hopefully Blizzard will address the issues with their endgame content in a satisfactory manner eventually.
- Davon
November 22nd, 2005 at 12:54 am
This post has been removed by the author.
November 22nd, 2005 at 1:05 am
I’ve been at my computer writing and deleting for 2 hours because nothing I’ve come up with comes to a good answer. Much of what I came up with was just sweet game mechanics like: picking from a skill set, or different but equal equipment, or merely it all being cosmetic. What my and many others here’s would be solutions fail to satisfy is the idea of aquisition. I’m convinced it’s not possible without much compromise or cop-out solutions. Example of a cop-out being a separation of competition and MMORPG elements–eleminating their material benefits during competitive modes. While this is a cop-out in my mind, it seems to be the best solution to me as well. The skill required for me to be baddass with Dudley is mutually exlusive toward the ’skill’ it took me to level my character in FFXI. However, I loved the moment my monk got his purple belt, and other rare equips. Further I silently flaunted it. The RPG elements are outside the spirit of competition anyway, so I wouldn’t mind, in fact insist/demand, that their benefits be taken away for competition. No gamer is greater than the other, but there are all walks of life. Some people play PURELY social games. I was about to say myspace, but then remembered that it has material rewards as well. When pondering solutions, I tried thinking of what fighting games have done for rewards as they are built on the foundation of competition. They usually just have cosmetic ones. Though when I think of what I want my equip to say… 1st Place, 3rd Strike, evo2k6. It’s funny. While much of my ramblings about what ‘good equips’ give you are a social thing, it seems a title amongst the greatest street fighter players is one as well. Perhaps you could have ‘Classic’ battlegrounds, the way it is, and ‘Competitive’ battlegrounds. Those adhering to the spirit of competition, will prefer one over the other. As rank is merely a social and relative matter anyway, it would seem those with tendencies toward one or the other, will be happy. I give this analogy- My friend was upset one day because one of her paintings didn’t get into this big yearly art show (despite one of her sculptures getting it). She continued saying only classical and romantic landscapes and portraits got in. Why should she be upset? If things are being judged purely for their material reasons by people who care only about that, she shouldn’t care about the show. In response, student art league (campus group), puts on the Salon de Refuse. A gallery showing of those works that didn’t make the cut. Seems like most MMO’s need this.
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:23 am
There was an article in the New York Times this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/arts/design/22vide.html?hp&ex=1132722000&en=34a1700ea8420964&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Someone at some university defines that there are 4 different types of players.
Anyway, I think its safe to say that not everyone will agree on what fair is, and that is inherently the problem with desigining a game that is fair AND addictive. The motivation that drives each type of player potentially causes behavior that would be considered unfair by another type of player.
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:57 am
Sirlin, you’ve defined magic to be fair once players are over a certain “minimum requirement” set. Similarly, one could argue that BG’s are fair only if people have above some “gear requirement”. Granted, BG’s as currently designed will never be perfectly fair as the way Sirlin has defined- someone will always have better gear than the others.
From my fairness side, I don’t have a problem with BG’s. You chose to go in, understanding that there will very likely be a gear discrepancy one way or another.
I think the issue here is, I would feel bad if players had no choice in the matter. But players choose to be on a pvp server. Players choose to be in BG’s, even knowing these things. Therefore, although I personally find ganking EXTREMLEY annoying (I’m sure we all have issues with Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, etc). Going to MC is EXTREMLEY annoying if an alliance raid happens to be there at the same time too. However, I chose to be subjected to this, and I don’t see how it is unfair. It’s definitely not competitive for a level 60 to gank a level 20, and it probably isn’t in the “spirit of the game”, but unfair, I don’t think so, especially since you consented to it. Granted, most people (including myself) didn’t expect this much grief, but, upon reflection, WOW is similar to RL in a lot of ways. Some people will always push things to the limit.
If, on the other hand, players were required to be on a PVP server, I could see this being a problem and then the gripes would be legitimate.
I think the problem is it would be difficult (if not impossible)to make a perfectly fair RPG that would be widely addictive to different groups (especially because different groups have different addictions) and therefore compromises have to be made, and not everything will be perfectly fair to everyone.
Blizzard keeps making a HUGE point of saying, that they try to make WOW for the “casual” gamer, but the high end content seems to be geared towards a different audience.
I think a more “fair” rpg would involve greater customization of ones characters. Make being able to use good gear a “talent” with sufficiently high cost. Let people put points into stamina/intellect/spirit. Let people have multiple configurations as a talent.
Therefore, instead of “improved fireball” you can “wield arcane items” scattered throughput the world that you find. Or you could make being able to weild specific TYPES of gear as talents also. I think part of the problem with WOW is some classes are WAY more gear dependent than other classes, which will naturally drive certain classes to be gear hogs.
With more customization, I could view that a naked mage with faster/more efficient fireballs could beat a mage with more intellect/stamina (only)
If you’re a naked warrior, good luck against a naked mage if you got no gear on.
I think to completely do away with the “accumulating” or “growing” of an RPG would no longer make a game an RPG anymore, and you would lose a big part of your target audience.
I guess true competitors view “growing” in terms of skill improvement, whereas the farmers view “growing” in terms of gear or money, bullies in terms of “how easy it is to kill/how many kills”, and the casual player - the amount of fun, and a combination of the above.
–Paisky
P.S. Yes, I know I’m being a pain, and I’m not debating for the sake of debating, but to help others understand that there ARE different audiences to market to for game design which will require different features
November 24th, 2005 at 2:49 am
I’ve been thinking on what Sirlin said about getting a stronger dragon punch the more you use it. Further, many people here have strong arguements that I mostly agree with, and can’t refute. Things like equal access to all equips or all cards or whatever. It was touched on before, but the concept of time is a main issue. So this led me to think of sealed deck tournaments in magic then to think of ’special events’ in MMO’s. Here people have an equal amount of time to do the event. Since preparation and the battle are part of it, why not combine them into the match. So here’s how it could go down. Two or more teams could enter a match and it would be instanced in huge areas. Classes would have to be balanced by level and have starting equipment based on that. Competitors could decide the level cap. The ‘match’ would last several sessions around 4-10 hours each. The match area could be an open field, or a cave/mine dungeon, or mountainous, or whatever. Now here’s where there could be one of two possible play styles. One could be that both teams compete in the instanced place at the same time. Exploring small dungeons, fighting monsters, getting items, and gaining levels. If the two teams cross, they battle it out, flee, or perhaps negotiate. If there were more than 2 teams this would be interesting. The other way would be that there would be seperate, identical, instanced maps with dungeons that each team would go into and try to make the most of their time. This way there would be a limit before they would be transported to the battlefield to battle the opponent. This way would be best with only two teams. This way would be good too because it could be set up so the two teams could adventure seperately, then the battle could be set for another time for convenience. Would your team push the time limit leveling or getting items? Or would you leave time for planning-getting equiped, selecting skills, etc..? (though there could be a built in planning time) Maps could be random or there could be set maps as well for balance issues. Items could be set or random, but should consider the party’s classes. Another factor could be the condition of the party-HP/MP-for when the battle starts. This all comes down to-who is the better quester? Will you level more, or will you search for items? Did you spend too much time resting? If not did you lose a member along the way? By merely setting an access time and limit, you make things critical and imminent. Much like fighting games. This could be the main meat of the game, or merely the competitive side. If this is the case, items found and/or levels gained could carry over if you win the match. This seems like an extremely exciting way to do approach MMO’s in my mind.
December 1st, 2005 at 4:42 pm
Fair? Fair would be rewarding people with armor or levels in the RPG game for attaining a high rank in the PvP game with pre-loaded characters, a la street fighter. Seriously, why not reward players with good equipment for having the foresight to study the instruction manual?Fair would be Blizard seeing PvP as the place in which to CONSTANTLY BETA TEST THEIR EQUIPMENT AND CHARACTERS, and reward people for winning well with underused characters. Fair would be Blizzard forums abuzz with the exploits of the people who won as healers against aggroers. Fair would be Blizzard finally realizing that instead of listening to the players whine about the balance on the forums, they should simply track the win/loss conditions of their characters and react accordingly.
There’s a wealth of well-written information out there. But with as many players as Blizzard is getting, statistical analysis is absolutely required.
Make WoW more like War3!
December 1st, 2005 at 6:56 pm
That’s an interesting comment, but perhaps you don’t fully understand the implications of what you’re suggesting. According to you, one can simply track the win/loss record of a class against another class and act accordingly. However, not only does this not take into account the relative “skill” of the players, but also how just looking at a win/loss record can’t tell you WHAT needs to be fixed. Forums, wehre players can raise specific issues they have with a class, can often give much mroe comprehensive advice than just a scoreboard.
Dawolffman
December 8th, 2005 at 11:22 am
“That’s an interesting comment, but perhaps you don’t fully understand the implications of what you’re suggesting. According to you, one can simply track the win/loss record of a class against another class and act accordingly. However, not only does this not take into account the relative “skill” of the players, but also how just looking at a win/loss record can’t tell you WHAT needs to be fixed.”
I hardly expect Blizzard to simply look at win-loss records without taking a good look at exactly HOW these wins and losses come about. There’s that ’save replay’ function on every game you play in War3.
“Forums, wehre players can raise specific issues they have with a class, can often give much mroe comprehensive advice than just a scoreboard.”
Agreed. But the forums have to have something relatively comparative to discuss. The forums are ALREADY driving the patch changes, and the complaints are from…people getting ganked by leveled players, people having nothing whatsoever to bring against certain equipment sets, etc,etc,etc. The numerous ancillary issues can be simplified by the best of writers, of course, but for every clearly stated, thoughtful position there’s a hundred prejudicial, misunderstood, or just plain off-the-wall murmerings.
Now, if the forumgoers had their own little field to actually settle and test their assertions in a format that isn’t vulnerable to the charge of “I’m not going to waste so much time getting the set/leveling the char to back up my claim,” the understanding of the game by the non-verbal learners will increase and the ignorant BS by the troublemakers will have a lot more trouble gaining traction.
I’m sure the Blizzard forum moderators would appreciate the addition. Makes it easier to separate the gamers blowing off steam and those with simple oratorical diharrea.
(At Sirlin, we’re all about using games to improve gamers. And vice versa.)
December 8th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
“Now, if the forumgoers had their own little field to actually settle…” So you’re suggesting here that the regular forum posters who seem to genuinely care about the game should be given the opportunity to have characters on a “testing” server, where Blizzard would try out patrch stuff and things? I don’t really understand.
Dawolffman
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:47 am
I’ve had this discussion with people before - game magazines and sites today are to games like Fangoria is to movies. They aren’t criticism or review, just fanboy productions and breathy hype machines.
You have never read any of my reviews then because I don’t do sycophantic twaddle. At one time at least one game company refused to send me product after I savaged one of their crap games.
Marty Dodge
February 19th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
HEY YA FUCKING PENIS HEAD
February 22nd, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Here’s a solution to battlegrounds.
Take a page from “Arranged Teams” in Warcraft 3.
Make battlegrounds go cross-server, so that my Arranged Team is matched up against an Arranged Team with a similar record from one of the other 130+ servers in the US.
Unfortunately Blizzard’s server architecture is completely the opposite of what’s necessary to support that :-/
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